


Cathedral of Sound

by kdweaver



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:18:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13119792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kdweaver/pseuds/kdweaver
Summary: A great stone edifice has stood at the gateway to the North for generations. Who built this great structure, and why?





	1. The Saint

The Cathedral rises up from the valley floor, as if to challenge the mountains behind it. It grows slowly as one approaches it on the wide stone road, at first appearing no more than a speck between the foothills. Then, as one draws nearer, it grows steadily taller, and taller, until as one stands nearly before it, it stretches up past the mountains, fitting in the empty blue space between the peaks, where the Great Northern Pass runs.

There are those who still live who can recall when the herds of wild beasts would travel freely through the pass, stampeding down into the fertile grasslands, trampling crops, crashing through houses and villages, eating farm animals, goring people and soldiers. Every town had to fight for itself to keep order, and to make it through the wild years of the stampedes.

But one year, from the port cities far to the South, a musician arrived. The biggest cities would hire him, and with his flutes and drums, his horns and viols, he would summon forth a sound. Strange, and unearthly to behold, it would weave through the air, through closed shutters and soot-filled chimneys, and give old folks toothaches, make children fall asleep, and unearth old memories.

The music would play, and then after some amount of time, no more than a summer storm, it would stop. Old folks’ pains would disappear, children would wake up and play, memories would disappear back behind the foggy curtain of forgetfulness.

The herds would stay clear of that city for weeks afterwards, sometimes even months. The Musician demanded a king’s ransom for his performances, but the cities and provinces made it back fivefold for the time, food, and lives saved.

During one of the years of stampede, the Mayor of a great city had an idea. The Musician was coming to his city, and traveling on through other nearby provinces. The Mayor had paid greatly for the Musician’s services many a year, and had grown tired of his arrogance and increasing demands.

However, the Gods had seen fit to bestow him with a blessing: his second daughter. She was aloof and argumentative, but her tutors had discovered that she held a great power — her mind was like a great vortex. Every moment, every word spoken in her presence, was laid perfectly into her mind, where each color never lost brilliance, each word spoken never petered out through echoes into silence. She would hear your arguments and laugh, then contradict you with a phrase you yourself had said days or weeks before.

She used her gift of memory to study, to recite poetry, and to break off marriage engagements with her habit of mockingly repeating her suitors’ words to them.

The Mayor came to her with one last proposal.

“Oh my child, willful as you are, I have one last proposal which I believe may satisfy you,” he spoke to her.

“Dear child, I’ve found the perfect match for you. Charming, eloquent, a rich Southerner…” she replied.

“The only man involved in this proposal is the Musician. Through this city and as many others as we can manage, you will follow him covertly. And you will listen.”

She turned her head and looked at her Father, indicating that she was, at least, curious.

“No scholar or normal musician has ever been able to write down the notes to his music. But no normal man has ever had the gifts which you have. Listen to him, learn his music, discover how to create it, and you may live out the rest of your days in peace — with your studies and solitude, never to be disturbed again by my talk of proposals.”

She stood up, folded her hands in front of her, and nodded.

“I accept.”

Traveling quietly and quickly, with only a single guard and handmaiden, she followed the Musician stealthily. His guards protected him and his instruments jealously, but nobody could stop others from following him on the same roads — at a discreet distance.

The Daughter listened to him, as he tuned his instruments at camp. She watched him as he clapped his hands under rock outcroppings, and he listened to the echoes. And, of course, she listened to his music in the cities.

Nothing had ever been hard for her to remember, and his music was the same way. But, she realized, it was difficult for her to think about it. She would think about it in different ways, and it would seem to shift and shimmer, with subtle rises in volume, or an almost inaudible passage on flute, becoming more or less important by the minute.

Slowly, she came to realize that the music filtered through her mood, her mind, her thoughts and worries, the heat of the day, and the dust of the road. In one moment it could seem bright and airy, then dark and troubled as she thought on old memories.

The Daughter then traveled to the mountain city of Galratha, where warm water flows through the deep caves behind the city, where no light travels far from the entrance, but the stone steps descend down, and down, and down. Leaving her guard and handmaiden at the cave entrance, she walked downwards, her unshod feet on the warm steps. Daylight faded behind her, and the only sound around her was the echo of her breaths.

After a thousand steps, she reached the pool of water, and waded in. Floating in that quiet pool, the same temperature as a warm hand, she thought and thought, until her thoughts melted away, and she was angry, sad, melancholy, envious, until she couldn’t feel any more, and her feelings melted away. Her body floated on the water, the same temperature as a warm hand.

Then, she saw the music. Unfiltered by thought or feeling, it shone, unclouded, bright and beautiful. She saw its divine procedure, its generation, how it unfolded so keenly in the minds of man and beast.

She ascended from the cave, and rested for a day; her handmaiden and guard had thought her lost in the caves, she had been gone so long. She comforted her weeping handmaiden, and bid her to find musicians for a celebration. She thanked her stoic guard, and asked him to find a private garden or court. They both returned successfully, and she brought the musicians to a rooftop garden near the city walls.

They played the songs they knew, and she smiled, and her handmaiden and guard danced. The musicians ran out of the songs they knew, and the hour grew late.

The musicians asked for her leave for the night, and she told them she had one last request. She gave them strange instructions, retuned their instruments, and they thought her mad.

Then, slowly, haltingly, they began to play as she conducted them. The musicians were astonished to hear the sound being produced by their small band. It was strange, unearthly. It drifted through closed shutters and soot-filled chimneys. Old folks got toothaches, children fell asleep, and old memories surfaced in confused heads.

It was the music of the Musician, who had come from the ports, far to the South. But he was nowhere near Galratha — they couldn’t afford his services. The only person who had guided them was sitting quietly in a chair, smiling gently, satisfiedly.

Though he was hundreds of miles away, the Musician howled, tore at his hair, and struck his instruments in rage, breaking them to pieces. He dismissed his guards, and stormed into the night, returning South.

Of course, we now know the Daughter as Saint Aelra, who first codified the music into patterns, combinations, partitions and registers. She, who built the first spirit-organ, who began the Cathedral which guards us from the Great Northern Pass. It plays the music, perfectly and eternally. No more wild hordes stampede through the pass, there are no more Wild Years, and there is no more Musician.


	2. The Sister

The eastern atrium of the Cathedral was silent. The quietus hibernal had begun, as it always did during the week of the equinox. In the Cathedral’s undercroft, under the heavy bell jars, the twisting, interleaving brass mechanisms of the Generator only composed music for the western spirit-organ. The hundreds of trackers branching out from the Generator’s western side danced up and down, lifting and closing valves in the organ far above, pulling and pushing stops.

In contrast, the other set of trackers were eerily still. Up in the eastern atrium, no tones leaked out from resonating pipes, no trackers turned or clacked. There was not even the hiss of air moving through regulators and manifolds, or leaking out through gaps in the windchests; the bellows were being patched while the organ was silent. The eastern pressure had fallen to just above ten inches of water, and the organ’s volume was suffering from it.

My work was above, in the eastern atrium — on the floor, and up in the galleries. Firstly, I was responsible for maintaining the vox bestia ranks, a set of 104 pipes which were a main component of the Generator’s music. Unsealing the rank’s sturdy windchest alone was a job which required multiple pairs of hands; two sisters helped me lower the front panel gently to the ground.

Using a wet cloth, I cleaned out the windchest, one section at a time. Dust, grime, soot — all of it was an enemy of the organ’s mechanics. The bell jars kept the Generator itself free from such demons, but the rest of the organworks were not so well sealed. I emptied my pail of dirty water, fetched a different cloth, and went through the windchest a second time. After I was satisfied that it was clean, I left it open to dry as we went for our noon prayers and meal.

The afternoon was much the same. I’d snuck in a small cushion to put under my bony knees as I kneeled in front of the windchest, checking the valves. Pulling gently on each one, I tested their tension and action. A valve needed to have a proper weight, the correct return, a satisfying thunk when it closed. Carefully, I inspected the seal on each valve, and replaced the leather heads where they were too worn or dirty.

Each rank’s windchest has its own smell. The vox bestia rank — cedar, iron, the harsh tang of some other metal. The ophicleide rank — pine resin, leather, and steel. All the pipes have their own feeling, too. The diapason pipes are smooth, cold, yet the vox humana pipes seem warm, and soft. The vox bestia ranks are rough, and feel heavy, substantial. Old Sister Jo had kept working on her ranks for ten years after her sight went; she told me that she understood them better than she ever had before, once she could no longer see them. I missed her dearly — her small, weathered face, her confident, nimble hands, forever tapping on pipes, rapping on windchests. She had chosen me to take over the vox bestia ranks when she realized she would be leaving us.

“Don’t let them go out of tune, now, or I’ll come back to nag!” she’d threatened me. I kept her pipes, now my pipes, in tune, but I could still feel her guidance from time to time. ‘Replace that valve, it’s no good,’ I’d hear in my head, or ‘that reed is done for, going to split before the next quietus.’ I always followed her advice, whenever I heard it.

The days of the quietus hibernal passed in a blur of dusting, checking valves, and aligning stops. Rank after rank, cleaning and double-checking, putting all into order for the next year of playing.

Soon, the week was over. All the windchests were reassembled and resealed, all the valves and their trackers back in place. The Sisters in the undercroft had finished repairing the bellows, and the air was back up at 12 inches of pressure; it hissed quietly through manifolds, regulators, and windchests. The last hour of the quietus passed. In the undercroft, the Generator slowly began playing through the eastern trackers. Tones leaked out through pipes and echoed in the eastern atrium, the voice of the spirit-organ rising and joining its western sibling. The pipes’ sounds let out into chimneys, which carried them into the Cathedral’s huge projection alcoves, high in the east tower. Leaping out from the tower, the sound traveled up into the Great Northern Pass, where its perfect divinity and order kept the waves of wild beasts at bay.


	3. The Explorer

Day 23 — The Great Northern Pass

The music echoed off the sheer rock walls of the pass, building up on itself, powerful enough to shake a man to his core. Strange snowdrifts piled up in arcane arrangements where the sound’s reflections stood still, and held the powder in place. We all marched on, heavy earmuffs on our heads, and over the heads of the pack animals. At first, they had tried to shake them off, but had stopped shaking their heads once we’d entered the pass. The sound was simply too much, and even they seemed to understand that.

I could feel different bones quiver as the music shifted through frequencies: my teeth came first, then my fingers and fingernails. My arms and legs were usually last. Occasionally, my eyes even seemed to vibrate in place. Concentrating on my walking, I attempted to filter out all sensation but that of my feet on the ground.

In the front of the expedition, the soldiers marched warily, their rifles ready on their shoulders. No one had seen a beast since the Cathedral of Sound had been completed almost two centuries ago, but they still roamed north of the Great Pass. Once we had traversed it, we would be in their wild lands.

Our mission is scientific: to survey north of the Arctic Mountains, recording the lay of the land and its resources. As a geologist and prospector, my mission is primarily to survey mineral deposits. Iron and other metals are in huge demand in the Kingdom, and new deposits in the largely unexplored North would be of great value, and would be well worth our risk.

The pass was many miles long, but the sheer cliffs which trapped and reflected the Cathedral’s sound ended after a few hours of walking. Gradually, the noise began to dissipate into the widening landscape. We stopped and removed the earmuffs from the animals, who had begun to shake their heads again. I joined them, taking off the heavy velvet pads and rubbing my ears thankfully.

Day 24 — The Arctic Plains

The end of the pass spread out before us, the path forward descending a rocky slope onto a vast, windswept tundra. The land was punctuated with icy lakes, linked by trickling streams. The ground was brown and green where the earth had been uncovered, white where it was still hidden by snow. Spots of color emerged where brave, tiny flowers grew from the barren ground.

The surveyors quickly devoted themselves to inspecting the landscape, and making maps. They had to take their gloves off to write, and so spent a good deal of time rubbing their hands together and cursing the still-cold late spring weather. One of the cartographers spotted something strange, and waved others over to look through his theodolite’s lens. The image through the lens appeared to show tusks sticking out of the ground, next to a lake.

We repacked and stowed the instruments, and proceeded down the escarpment to the tundra. Our destination was the strange features seen through the theodolite. Stopping at one of the cold lakes, we watered the animals and refilled our canteens. The water was bitterly cold, but perfectly clear and fresh.

Unlike in the mountains, where the rocky landscape was new and sharp, made largely of basalt and dacite, the tundra had a thick layer of soil. At the top, it was wet and cold — lower, it was tough, and frozen.

I suspect the meltwater at the surface is unable to penetrate the solidly frozen lower layer, creating the picturesque lakes and streams we observed. But the cold returns quickly, and the deep frozen layer never has a chance to fully thaw, trapping what water there is at the surface. Such a system is quite interesting, but would be treacherous to build upon. The land and lakes would likely shift from one year to the next, with the thaws and freezes.

We traveled towards our goal for a few more hours. In the late spring, the light lasts longer than the endurance of men and beasts, and we stopped to make camp while the sky was still bright.

Day 25 — Tusks and Aurora

More travel. This land has an undeniable alien beauty, but one part of it seems much the same as any other. I’ve begun to wonder about the purpose of our mission. The landscape and lakes we survey likely change from one year to the next — the precise maps the surveyors are making could be useless, come the next spring. I haven’t seen any signs in my prospecting samples of any iron or metallic deposits. The landscape is hillocks, lakes, streams, wet dirt, fragile grass, moss, and flowers. Eternal sun, eternal cold, eternal wind. The only life we’ve observed is flocks of birds, coursing through the sky, and small, silver fish, darting through the cold, clear water.

At midday, we arrived at the site we’d espied from the escarpment, where the surveyor had seen tusks sticking out of the ground. The site was on the side of a small hillock, next to a lake. The tall, white features were not tusks, however; they were bones. Skulls and ribs, tibias and femurs, and all the other pieces which had likely never been named. They were the skeletons of beasts, just like the ones hung in old castles and museums, the ones in old etchings and stories. The ribcages alone were so large that a horse could ride inside of one.

Our best estimate was that there were thirteen skeletons by that lake. Why there were so many in one place, none of us could say. The surveyors laid out the bones, and started taking sketches. None of us were trained as zoologists, but accurate information on beasts was rare, despite their place in our history and culture. We remained there the rest of the day, studying the beasts’ bones and taking notes.

(Addendum)

I awoke during the short night; my tent’s front closure had come undone, and cold air was blowing in, making the canvas flap loudly. Sitting up to re-close the entrance, I glanced at the world outside — and then exited my tent.

The night sky was awash with colors — great weaving bands of color wreathed the sky, in hues of green, blue, and gold. The brief warmth of the day was long gone, but the wind was strong as ever, cutting through my clothes and chilling my skin. Passing me, it wove through the beasts’ tired old bones, making them whine and whistle as the lights slowly morphed and shifted overhead. I saw it all reflected, mirrored off the choppy surface of the meltwater lake, images of the bones and the light melting into the shape of the waves.

Though I was frozen to the bone, I could not tell you how long I stood there. I felt tears in my eyes, but I could not say if they came solely from the chill wind on my face.

Eventually, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was one of the soldiers — all I could see of him was his eyes, under his heavy winter hat and above his tightly-wound scarf. He was worried I was going to get frostbite, as I’d been outside since he’d come on watch, and I was scarcely dressed for the cold. Suddenly embarrassed, I returned to my tent, and re-tied the flap shut securely. Shorty after climbing into my bedroll, I began to shiver violently. Eventually, the sun began to rise, and I returned to sleep.

Day 26 — Continuing East

Doctor is unhappy with me. Fingers and toes are frostnipped. They are painful, itchy. Should be alright. Writing is difficult. Heading east, to low hill range. Hope to find better prospects.

Day 29 — Stranger Landscapes

Fingers hurt too badly to write the past two days, but have since improved. I am taking care to keep them warm, and have not gone out at night again.

Group arrived at range of hills we observed. They are most peculiar, and extend into what seems to be a ring. The surveyors estimate the radius of this ring to be over twenty miles. At the ring’s center, there is a most curious protrusion of rock. From our vantage point, this seems to the the only area of elevation which we can observe in the entire tundra.

Day 30 — Discovery

A soldier brought me something. “Is this what I think it is?” he asked, placing a small, yellow nugget in the palm of my hand. It was heavy. I opened my chemical chest, and tested it. Neither chloric nor sulfuric acid dissolved it. Carefully, I mixed a few drops of aqua regia, and placed one on the nugget. It foamed, and left behind what had to be brown chloride.

There is something much, much better than iron in this strange ring of hills. There is gold.


	4. The Tourists

The tour guide led her group through the garden. Hardy trees and hedges encircled beds of alpine flowers, which were just beginning to bloom. Large blocks of stone were scattered throughout the garden.

“Here, you can see the fragments of the original western tower, which were left where they fell after a damaged bomber struck the tower during the Great War of Succession.”

The tour guide inspected the faces of the group. Some of them looked engaged; she wondered if they imagined what it was like, to see an old bomber, leaking smoke and fuel, crash into the side of the Cathedral on a pitch-black night. To see the fiery orange blossom of the explosion briefly light the valley, and then to hear the ancient tower groan, crumble, and fall.

Other faces held glazed eyes and distracted expressions, their owners thinking of reclining bus seats, buffets, warm towels, and hotel hot tubs. She continued on.

“Although the western tower was rebuilt to save the building, the spirit-organ which was housed within was deemed too damaged to repair, and much of it, tragically, was scrapped.”

They entered the Cathedral through its western door, and looked from the corridor into the rebuilt western atrium. It had scars, where the old stones met the new, where platforms for ranks of pipes stood empty, and where trackers ran up from the floor, connected to nothing.

“However, we can still view the organ’s sibling, the eastern organ, which has been restored to working condition.”

They walked onwards, and gazed into the eastern atrium — it stood old, proud, unscarred. Modern lights lit the pipes, setting off their range of colors: copper, silver, bronze, dark iron, golden wood.

“These pipes, along with the former west organ, played almost continuously for over two centuries. Each organ was only stopped separately for a week of maintenance out of each year, barring rare emergency failures, of which only three were ever recorded.”

“However, after the Bone Crater Gold Rush, and the subsequent discovery of the northern Mammuthus Bestia’s extinction, the Cathedral no longer served a practical purpose. Gradually, it shifted into being a waypoint for miners and prospectors travelling north. But once the Northern Railway was completed, the Cathedral was gradually abandoned, being too expensive, large, and out of the way for the Church to maintain.”

Her words echoed through the long stone corridor. She thought of the Cathedral in recent decades past, when the cold winds had been allowed to blow through broken windows, when water had dripped in and run into the undercroft, where the damp festered and collected. It had seeped in through the ports under the bell jars, into the brass heart of the musical generator. Its delicate gears and levers had gradually turned green, wrecking the machinery’s close tolerances as the metal corroded and flaked. Sitting in the wet darkness, trapped under the useless protection of the glass bell jars, one of the most incredible examples of a past century’s ingenuity had been allowed to rust away.

“Fortunately, the Cathedral’s status as a national icon and historic site were recognized after the war, and sufficient funds were allocated to restore it to its current condition, before the east organ and musical generator were entirely lost to decay.”

The tour guide walked her group back to the vestibule of the Cathedral. Refurbished stained-glass windows showed the journey of Saint Aelra as she divined the nature of the music, and created plans to protect the realm from the wild beasts. The tour guide thought that the windows made a nice contrast with the dull facts presented in the adjacent museum.

“That concludes this tour of the Cathedral and its grounds. For more information, you can visit the adjacent museum, or buy one of the books from our gift store near the parking lot. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your visit.”

Most of the tour group wandered out of the Cathedral’s front door, or took another glance at the eastern organ. It was still a site of pilgrimage for some, although it had been deconsecrated long ago, its mystic operation laid bare by facts and reason. The tour guide took a breath and relaxed, becoming, once again, a curator, the role she felt more comfortable in.

“-don’t you think it’d be better that way? To rebuild it?”

She heard the edges of a conversation from around the corner. Stepping back into the corridor, she saw a young couple standing by the entrance to the western atrium.

“Hello,” she greeted them. “Have any questions?”

“Yes,” the young woman responded. “I was wondering about the western atrium. Wouldn’t it make sense to rebuild the western organ? As part of the museum?”

The curator smiled.

“That was a subject of much debate, actually. The Cathedral Trust could conceivably raise enough money to reconstruct a western organ, but there’s a question of — authenticity, and purpose.”

“Authenticity?”

“Yes. The eastern organ contains a lot of dangerous substances — lead, and arsenic, for example — and other pieces are woods and materials from endangered trees and animals. We would have to decide which pieces to substitute, and at the end, it raised questions about how ‘authentic’ any replica could be.”

And as far as purpose goes, while a new organ would be pretty to look at, even the working eastern organ is hardly ever played. It’s actually considered a nuisance by some of the nearer villages, when we do use it. We definitely don’t need more sound. So, on the grounds of questionable authenticity and purpose, management has decided not to pursue a recreation of the western organ.”

Oh, and the Director likes the western atrium empty, anyway. She thinks that it’s as much a war monument, as anything else.”

“Huh. I see,” the young woman replied, staring at where the new stones met the old.

“Thank you,” her boyfriend added. “That was all really interesting.”

“Glad to help,” the Curator responded, before walking away.

“Ryan, want to go see the museum now?” the young woman asked.

“Yes, let’s,” he replied.

They exited the Cathedral, and walked along the gravel path to the museum — a modern building, with a curving facade of glass panels cased in black steel. The automatic doors swished apart as they entered the large, bright museum space, and began to wander through the exhibits.

“Mary, look at this,” Ryan whispered as he studied an artist’s drawing of the beasts, the Mammuthus Bestia. “Did you know a beast’s head was covered in ears?”

“Yeah, you didn’t know that?” she asked, surprised. “It’s why the music worked the way it did. I thought everybody learned that in school.”

“I guess I must have fallen asleep that day,” he admitted, smiling.

“They used sound for everything, you know. Hunting, mating, tracking storms — the things were nearly blind. They wouldn’t go near the racket the Cathedral made, though.”

“So why’d they all die, if they lived up North anyway?”

“Something about — food and babies. They needed to come South to have kids and eat, but they couldn’t get through the pass anymore. So, eventually, they all died. I think that’s what the exhibit over there, with all the bones, is about.”

They walked through the display which showed the reconstructed skeleton of a full-sized Mammuthus Bestia. Its foreleg alone was almost tall as Ryan — the roof above it had been raised into a dome, for it to fit inside the museum. After that, they passed through selections from the diary of a Devoted Sister Albright, who had maintained the eastern organ for fifty years, and whose papers had survived inside a dusty convent archive.

“Do you think she was happy, looking after an organ for fifty years?” Ryan thought out loud.

“She doesn’t seem sad. Except for when the organ stopped that once. Just listen to her… ‘the river is dry. The waterwheels have stopped. The sound is gone. I feel empty inside — where are the gods?’” she quoted.

“I guess your life is whatever you make of it.”

“Mmm.”

The beginning of the Cathedral’s downfall was represented by the expedition logs of Max Godwin, the prospector who had discovered the Bone Crater deposits, and set off the gold rush.

“Why do you think such a rich guy killed himself?” Mary asked Ryan, as they read through a summary of his life.

“You hear things about people way up North — that they lose it during the winter. I guess, it’s like, you haven’t seen the sun for two months, maybe you’re a little tipsy, and you decide to go outside, follow the beautiful lights in the sky for a while. Then, maybe you fall, or get lost, and nobody knows where you are. Eventually, you get cold and lie down, and then they find you in the spring.”

Mary shivered. “Sad way to go.”

Ryan nodded. “Come on, I think the music’s about to start.”

They filed into a dim auditorium, and sat down in the folding seats. After a minute, the lights dimmed, and the projection began. It showed a film of the restored Cathedral in operation — one screen on the music generator in the undercroft, the other on the eastern organ in its atrium. Air hissed through the organ before it began to play. Then, the brass wheels of the new generator started turning, sending long levers moving up and down. The organ’s sound had been recorded directly from its projection alcoves, and so its huge, bright tones expanded clearly, filling the entire auditorium. The music shifted through frequencies and ranks — it was unearthly and strange, primitive and modern. The recording lasted fifteen minutes, and then faded out. The generator’s combinatoric program would make unique arrangements of music for the period of an entire year, but one could sense the gist of it in around fifteen minutes. Mary and Ryan stood up, and exited the auditorium, feeling dazed, touched, or some combination of the two. Slowly, they began walking down the path to the parking lot.

Suddenly, Mary stopped to sit down on a bench by the path.

“Ryan, hold up a minute — my jaw hurts something awful right now,” she said. Ryan kept walking towards the parking lot.

“Ryan?” Mary called out. “Ryan?”

He turned, surprised.

“Wha — oh, sorry, I was a million miles away just now.”

They sat on the bench for a handful of minutes. Quite suddenly, Mary’s jaw felt better, and they resumed the walk to the parking lot. Climbing into their car, they put a cassette of pop music into the stereo and began the drive back home. As they followed the road south, the Cathedral gradually shrank behind them in the rearview mirror. Eventually, the road followed a bend in the valley, and the Cathedral’s stone edifice slid behind a hill, and was gone from sight. The car drove on.


End file.
